Murugavel (Vijay Antony) is the most earnest cop you’ll find. He doesn’t take bribes (and to the irritation of his colleagues, he won’t let them either). When he sees a sewage-related problem, he wades into the muck and begins a cleanup operation. When his disgusted colleagues, who’ve been roped in, ask him why, he says clogged roads lead to traffic jams and crowds, which makes it easier for pickpockets. Or something. His younger brother is sick of his goodness. We’d be too, if the writer-director Ganeshaa weren’t so self-aware. At one point, Murugavel explains to a distraught father how his young son is filled with the villain’s (Padma, played by Sai Dheena) influence. As a demo, he fills a glass with water. The glass is the boy. The water is Padma. And it’s up to them to wean the boy away — so Murugavel keeps dropping pebbles into the glass. Slowly, the water begins to spill out. Just as scene reaches the “Are you kidding me with this?” level, the boy’s father snaps: “I’m asking you for help, and you’re narrating the fable about the crow and the pitcher.” I laughed. Everyone around me did.

Thimiru Pudichavan (The Arrogant Man) is outlandish fun. A lot of the time, I was laughing at it. The OTT stretches are pulp-movie heaven. Like Jason Statham in the Crank instalments, Murugavel needs to keep his heart rate/blood pressure up — so he wears a wristwatch-like indicator that glows red for danger. It’s a sight gag in itself. (It looks like a homing beacon from a William Shatner-era episode of Star Trek.) And an electroshock moment towards the end is glorious — as is a moment involving Lord Muruga’s rooster. Yes. You read that right. Thimiru Pudichavan is like Crank meets a Ramanarayanan movie. That should tell you, right away, if you’re the target audience. Even when his character is possessed by the spirit of the Lord, Vijay Antony’s facial expressions remain frozen. But the film winks at that, too. This time, you are laughing with the proceedings.

Completely agreed with the review. either you are having fun with the film or at the film. there is no dull moment. People like Murugadoss and Hari , who have totally lost themselves in doing propaganda for the hero or unnecessary technical gimmicks, needs to take notes from this film to realise what has been missing in their films. the element of fun which this B masala movie provides in abundance

The things i enjoyed most are

The way the 2 main masala themes are treated

First, the good cop brother dispatching the evil criminal brother which could have taken up the entire film, is dispensed with right in the prologue itself

The battle between the hero cop and the main villain is almost sidelined or is just one of the things he does in the film. he is more interested in other things, mainly being a do gooder to the society

The film was more a B movie version of action hero Biju, A ride with the cop for a day. here its more like a ride with a too good to be true cop for some days, as he goes around doing one good deed after another like eliminating bribing, increasing the morale of the fellow officers, etc etc. the scene where he lobbies with the collector to get the constable to raise the flag ,with unnai mattrikondal ulagam maarum playing in the background, pretty much sums up the film. It was both unintentionally funny as well as emotionally moving that i didn’t know whether to laugh or cry

Even more audacious is the concept of the kiss that steadies the hero’s blood pressure with some low tech graphics to go along with it. the scene puts any of shankar or shankar inspired hi tech CGI moment – think of Hello doctor song – to shame for its sheer bravado

I dont think there is any other mainstream masala film where so much winking and joking at the expense of the star playing the lead actor. the expressionless of the hero gets one joke from the heroine, then he gets compared to sivaji in thankapathakam by his superior officer.

The biggest surprise was the heroine’s character and her performance. its one of the best in recent mainstream tamil action picture. As you mentioned, instead of cutifying it, she plays it rough and sassy and still she remains the tamil film heroine.

In the end i didnt care whether it was a good film or bad film or whether i want to see it again or not, but it was one hell of an enjoyable ride. for that alone ganesha deserves a thangapathakam

BR, I agree with the article on why we watch so-bad-it’s-good films, but gosh, what a condescending statement this was:and the researchers found it is mostly film buffs who watch trash films, which would make sense, as very often their enjoyment comes down to analyses of production values, dialogue and plot structure.

And the audience is ‘mostly film buffs’? Are you really kidding me? That research is skewed because, probably, the only people who responded to their survey were film buffs!

Add to that the sub-editor’s addition of the headline linking intelligence to watching bad movies and I was thinking to myself – ‘Heh. Someone really needs validation for watching bad movies.’

I call BS. Very few people are watching bad movies to analyse plot structure. Plot structure?!! Piranhaconda had a plot, of course!

Couldn’t help notice Padma is riding the same jeep Rajni did in kaala. He even wears black for most of the initial portions. There’s even a dialogue somewhere winking at Rajni playing gangster these days. There’s a lot of thought that has gone in its making. The watch cgi was really fun. Strange how small efforts from the writing department can elevate the average do gooder script.

I might be wrong but the deliberate use of tacky visual effects /animation or laughs where the director couldn’t afford refined vfx seemed like a leaf out of Robert Rodriguez’s book.

All the plot points and action choreography in this movie were so inventive that this movie is better than all the recent ajith/vijay movies – just like BR sir said — “Thimiru Pudichavan may not be great cinema, but it delivers more bang for the buck than the “mass” movies we usually get from bigger stars and bigger-name directors.”

One lesson the director could have borrowed from directors like murugadoss, hari et al is pacing… though the individual set pieces are entertaining, the movie seems a bit too long and one ends up a little exhausted and less satisfied by the end…

The deliberate mocking of the hero , both by the situations and by some of the characters through dialogues is a slap on the face of the virtuos characters played by vijay and ajith.

Scenes like the glass- pebble scene where a serious hero is reduced to ridicule at the end with a retort by the person on the other end reminded me of the climax of Kick wherein Salman Khan’s heroic monologue is cut short dismissively by Nawazuddin in a ‘i don’t have time for this bull’ vain…

Also, the acting by the entire cast was so uniformly good…Even vijay antony really got the essence of his role and played it so well and nivetha pethuraj was definitely a revelation.

Hope this movie gets the due it deserves…Dunno how it is doing in TN…But I feel this is the kinda movie we need more of in the ‘movies just for entertainment’ space…I have a feeling this movie’s gonna break some TRP records on TV going by Karan Johan’s logic in the recent interview.

Odiyan Hater: But I feel this is the kinda movie we need more of in the ‘movies just for entertainment’ space…

Exactly. Our commerial cinema will be a much better space if the mass movies are done with this kind of inventiveness, reverence for masala tradition (I still can’t get over the wonderful writing that led to the biriyani-eating scene), and tongue-in-cheek humour.

This scene – “At one point, Murugavel explains to a distraught father how his young son is filled with the villain’s (Padma, played by Sai Dheena) influence. As a demo, he fills a glass with water. The glass is the boy. The water is Padma. And it’s up to them to wean the boy away — so Murugavel keeps dropping pebbles into the glass. Slowly, the water begins to spill out. Just as scene reaches the “Are you kidding me with this?” level, the boy’s father snaps: “I’m asking you for help, and you’re narrating the fable about the crow and the pitcher.” I laughed. Everyone around me did.”

“Oh, right! 🙂 When you said “glass pebble”, I imagined a scene which had pebbles made of glass and I was like… did I fall asleep or something? 🙂”

Sir, even i was surprised how you could forget that scene after mentioning it in your review… Perhaps I should have mentioned tumbler 🙂

“I still can’t get over the wonderful writing that led to the biriyani-eating scene”

Spoilers
When this happened I simultaneously got a masala kick and a comic fix (the matter of fact way in which he was eating, the absurdity of the whole thing, the reaction of the biriyani seller and the plain logic that this guy was hungry from skipping meals and therefore eating that plate of biriyani was the most natural thing to do made me giggle), but the emotional import of the scene – that Vijay Antony was unable to eat due to the guilt in his mind about not having brought up his brother in the right manner became clear to me only when vijay antony mentioned it a few scenes later…Sir, was this aspect of the scene clear to you as the scene played out?

I really liked how the ‘act of biriyani eating’ instantly got vijay antony’s character branded as a weirdo/psycho in the eyes of those like SI madonna…Also scenes like —-1) his brother’s body being taken for postmortem and the doctor comes to know that vijay antony himself killed his brother and 2) vijay antony approaching a psychiatrist and telling her i am sad about my brother’s bereavement and upon being asked about the cause of death saying that he killed him — where the brother’s death was played for laughs were just too good.

The above scenes were obviously meant to be funny…But in many other scenes it wasn’t clear whether the proceedings were unintentionally hilarious or whether the director was going for campy fun. Though I feel it was more of the latter. The director was like – ‘Hey i got a story to tell and I have to show these scenes for the emotional logic and I know they are clichéd as hell, so i am gonna make them hilarious’. But I think this aspect will be lost on many people and they’ll see the ‘insomnia watch’, the stunning OTT action sequence outside the temple (naga naga song) etc. and think that this a ‘logic-less stupid movie’.

Also sir, how would you divide this movie based on the three act structure?

Odiyan Hater: That’s why we had that build-up, no? Repeated scenes of him refusing to eat the food his brother was getting him. Then, the brother telling his cohorts “If he doesn’t eat, just kill him.” Then, the shot of the dustbin filled to the brim with uneaten food.

So by the time the shooting happens, his hunger is well-established 🙂 I was expecting the build-up to result in some payoff, but this one blew my mind. He is SO hungry that he cannot even grieve — he just needs food right then.

MANK: There’s another action block staged with a song sequence that I’m not able to recall now..

“And that naga naga song fight sequence seems to be a nod to Madura veeran from dhool”

Thanks for pointing this out…Just watched the song – the comments section is full of people making fun of the vivegam climax 😀

And Naga Naga is definitely mass as hell…The tune is similar to vijay Antony’s own puli murumudhu from vettaikkaran…But naga naga has its own identity…Both the songs are awesome, vijay antony is incomparable when it comes to such songs…

Also BR sir , MANK sir and others here — Vijay antony has not just starred, composed music and produced the movie (in his wife’s name) but he has also edited the movie…And the editing seemed very smooth and apt for the movie and not at all amateurish (from my layman perspective)…An essay on Vijay Antony the multi talented multi faceted powerhouse is waiting to be written…Somebody please do it…

“He is SO hungry that he cannot even grieve — he just needs food right then.”

Yes yes exactly… But at that point I had no idea why he hadn’t eaten all the food his brother offered ( i presumed he was sad, feeling disgusted by his brother’s deeds etc.) and the reason became clear that vijay antony could eat only once the guilt about his wayward brother being a menace to the society was gone once he killed him only when vijay antony said it in a subsequent scene( plus he was really hungry like you said)…The final sleeping scene /shot was a continuation of the same trope — he wasn’t able to sleep cause of all the juvenile delinquents being under padma’s control and padma being powerful (his dead brother with bullet wound and blood on face kept asking him about this at night) …With the climax when that issue got resolved he was finally able to sleep…

Unrelated — In CCV vijay sethupathy brought a certain self aware kinda humour to his scenes… Although not exactly similar the time of those scenes are kinda similar to some of the scenes in ithinoru pudichavan – especially the ones featuring nivetha pethuraj.

“There’s another action block staged with a song sequence that I’m not able to recall now..”

^^ here the dispute breaks out over the choice of song to be sung at a ganamela (concert) — an old lady(sukumari) wants new peppy dappankoothu style song to be played while the local hooligans want an older meaningful song to be sung…

^^ Thanks for the suggestion 🙂
Machete series by Robert Rodriguez, Revolver Rani, Bullett Raja, Khiladi 786, policegiri (hindi version of saamy) etc are some i can think off the top of my head though all these movies are OTT they’re pretty different from each other